Letters

Glad to’ve received your letter and your alphabetical wedding blessing, friend (to which there is no N; ditto, I pray, our love!); have been reflecting since upon your project; don’t know what you have by now in hand or in mind for your several correspondents, or what your book’s to be about; there occurs however to this former formalist a design (see below), which of course you are to alter to your purposes. The late Arthur Morton King would’ve published the design instead of the novel; the new Ambrose Mensch might prefer the novel without the design. But he was he; you are you; I shall be I.

Goals: grace, Grail, Götterdämmerung.

Good-bye,

A.

P.S.:

A: The Author to Germaine Pitt and Ambrose Mensch. An alphabetical wedding toast.

Chautauqua, New York

September 7, 1969

From Ye Hornbooke of Weddyng Greetynge (Anonymous, 16th Century?):

Alle

Blessynges

Content that Cheereth ye

Darkest Days No

Enemy but many

Friendes

Good luck & Good

Health to

Inspire

Joye Bee happy as a

Kynge through a

Longe lyfe

May Mirthe

Open a

Path of Peace & never

Quit you but give you

Rest &

Sunneshine In

Trial may you bee

Unceasynglie

Victorious & attaine

Wealthe & Wisdom &

Xcellence Bee

Younge in hearte with

Zest to enjoy these & alle other good thyngs

Amen

B.

L: The Author to the Reader. LETTERS is “now” ended. Envoi.

“Sunday, September 14, 1969”

Dear Reader,

LETTERS reaches herewith and “now” (the Author outlines this last on Tuesday, July 4, 1978. The U.S. Bicentennial was celebrated, in the main, quietly, two years since, by a citizenry subdued by the Watergate scandals, the presidential impeachment hearings, the resignation of President Nixon, and his full and complete pardon by President Ford, himself defeated four months later by President Carter, with whom this week’s polls show only 23 % of the electorate to be satisfied. The post office has raised the first-class postal rate to 15¢ per ounce. Vice-President Mondale has returned from private talks with Egyptian President Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Begin meant to renew the stalled Middle East peace negotiations. New fighting in Lebanon. RN, ex-President Nixon’s memoirs, is #3 on the New York Times list of nonfiction best-sellers. The Dow-Jones Industrial Average continues to decline, the dollar likewise against other currencies, the nation’s economy to inflate at the alarming rate of 11 % annually for the first half of 1978. The administration is now pledged to give that problem priority over unemployment, the flagging détente with the U.S.S.R., the country’s lack of a coherent energy policy, and other national concerns.

(The Author drafts this in longhand at Chautauqua Lake, N.Y., on Monday, July 10, 1978, a decade since he first conceived an old-time epistolary novel by seven fictitious drolls etc. U.S. cancels missions to U.S.S.R. to protest trial of Soviet dissidents. Cloudy and cool on Niagara Frontier, warm and humid on Chesapeake Bay. In the interim between outline and longhand draft, as again between longhand draft and first typescript, first typescript and final draft, final draft and galley proofs, he goes forward with Horace’s “labor of the file”: rewriting, editing, dismantling the scaffolding, clearing out the rubbish, planting azaleas about the foundations, testing the wiring and plumbing, hanging doors and windows and pictures, waxing floors, polishing mirrors and windowpanes — and glancing from time to time, even gazing, from an upper storey, down the road, where he makes out in the hazy distance what appear to be familiar loblolly pines, a certain point of dry ground between two creeklets, a steaming tidewater noon, someone waking half tranced, knowing where he is but not at first who, or why he’s there. He yawns and shivers, blinks and looks about. He reaches to check and wind his pocketwatch.

(He types this on October 5, 1978, in Baltimore, Maryland. Time flies. Sloop Brillig found abandoned in Chesapeake Bay off mouth of Patuxent River, all sails set, C.I.A. documents in attaché case aboard. Body of owner, former C.I.A. agent, recovered from Bay one week later, 40 pounds of scuba-diving weights attached, bullet hole in head. C.I.A. and F.B.I, monitoring investigation by local authorities. Nature of documents not disclosed. Time now to lay the cornerstone, run Old Glory up the pole, let off the fireworks, open doors to the public. This way, please. Mind your step: floors just waxed. Do read the guide markers as you go along. Here’s one now.